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Tony looked from Peter, asleep on the living room sofa, to the glass on the countertop. Stabbed. Again. The third time this month. He blew out a breath, shaking his head. He’d sort out training for the kid in the morning; he’d wake up in his Manhattan apartment, rouse Peter and tell him that he’s going to learn to fight better.
Of course, he didn’t really have many of the Avengers around anymore, but Rhodey would do well in a pinch and Vision could download the entirety of the internet’s resources on self-defence and teach Peter. He didn’t want to see something like that again; didn’t want to see the blood forming an ocean beneath Peter’s body, the dark red no different from the red of his suit; the way Peter’s eyes were so lightly shut, like he was just drifting off.
No, Tony wasn’t going to think about that anymore. He was going to look to the future. Training the kid was his priority now.
The clock ticked over to five AM, the sun barely breaking out across the New York skyline. Tony took his glass – was it really too early to be drinking if he hadn’t gone to sleep at all? – and wandered out onto the balcony, shutting the door lightly behind him.
Not far from where he stood was Stark Tower, where he’d taken Peter and called Cho in (luckily, she was in the area) to patch him up. Peter had a massive blood transfusion, and while Cho thought it would be best to keep him in a medbay, Peter woke up long enough to insist they go somewhere else. Tony knew the kid hated the smell of antiseptic and the sterile white of the walls.
Cho would visit them later, at Tony’s apartment, and they’d make sure his enhanced healing was fixing up the wound.
“He shouldn’t be alive,” Cho had whispered after Peter fell back into a deep sleep. “A person can’t lose that much blood and still be alive.”
As much as Peter was a miracle, he was also one disaster after another, and Tony didn’t know if he could hold out any longer. The kid was pushing himself so hard every night and going home with more injuries than he’d given out. And Tony was getting phone calls every other night, and last night-
He clenched the glass in his hand. He hadn’t picked up. He hadn’t heard Peter’s call. It was past his curfew and Tony had blared AC/DC and forgotten that the kid had a tendency to take the long way home.
He’d let the kid – his kid, his kid, his kid – bleed out. He hadn’t been there to save him-
“Shit.” The glass cracked in his hands and Tony dropped it too late. The glass shredded through the skin of his left hand, the alcohol hissing at the slices, before it shattered across the balcony floor.
Tony stepped back from the mess and glared at it, then turned his attention to the blood. It was thin and probably just a surface cut, but he could see the tiny shards of glass in his palm, could feel them crunch when he moved his fingers.
“Perfect,” he muttered, heading back inside. “Just perfect. First the kid bleeds out and now I’m…” he trailed off with a grunt, making his way to the kitchen and rifling through the cabinets for the first aid kit. He pulled it out and winced at the way it clattered against the counter when he lost his grip.
Tony glanced over his shoulder and sighed as Peter’s body twitched and shifted. “And now you’ve woken him up,” he muttered, shaking his head. Tony’s whole hand was red by now – he was a bleeder, even if the scratches were barely skin deep, and he held his hand over the sink while he tried to find what he was looking for.
Behind him, Peter groaned. “Mr Stark?”
“Yeah, kid.”
“Wha’ time is it?”
“A little past five AM,” Tony replied, glancing over his shoulder. Peter was sitting up on the sofa, blinking through bleary eyes and looking right at him. “Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you and you need all the rest you can get.”
Peter hummed. “What are you doing?”
“It’s nothing you need to be worrying about. Go back to sleep.”
Peter fell silent and Tony hoped he’d slouched back into the sofa, but a moment later there was a body by his side, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Peter’s face was pulled into a deep frown as he studied Tony’s hand.
“What happened?”
“Broke a glass. No biggie.”
“There’s still glass in your hand.”
Tony pulled the tweezers out of the kit at last and Peter snatched them from his hand before he had a chance to move away.
“Peter-”
“Come on,” the kid replied, yawning and stepping around Tony until he was leaning over the sink. Peter reached forward and flicked on the wall lights that glowed beneath the cabinet, lighting up the damage on Tony’s hand. “I’ve done it before.”
“Not when you’re down a few pints of blood,” Tony mumbled, but he didn’t struggle against Peter’s careful grip on his wrist, squinting just a little as the tweezer began picking the glass from his palm. Tony watched in silence, his jaw locked, until Peter seemed satisfied.
Then Peter turned on the tap, letting the cold water run slow, and leading Tony’s hand beneath it. Tony hissed, jerking against Peter’s grip, but the boy held his hand steady.
“You need to go back to bed,” Tony commented as Peter left his hand under the stream of water to collect the kitchen roll and cloth bandage.
“You need to go to bed period,” Peter replied. His movements were slow and muted and Tony watched as he methodically turned off the water and blotted Tony’s hand dry. The blood was slow to reappear, but it did in small, vivid red dots. It was strange how bright his blood was compared to the deep red that had poured out of Peter only hours before.
Peter wrapped the bandage around Tony’s hand, securing it tightly, before stepping back and pulling his blanket back around his shoulders.
“May knows I’m here, right?” Peter asked.
Tony nodded, his eyes stuck on Peter’s handiwork. “Yeah. Yeah. She knows. Go to sleep, Pete.”
“You too,” Peter said, his fingers clutching around Tony’s elbow before he turned to pull him gently towards his bedroom.
“I’m fine, kid,” Tony said. “And someone needs to keep an eye on you.”
“I’m healing,” Peter replied, though his speech sounded slurred from sleep. “Come on. We’re injured. We’re tired.”
Tony let Peter tug him to his bedroom, and watched, amused, as Peter flopped onto Tony’s bed without regard. If he had more blood in him, Peter would never do something like that and Tony knew it. If Peter had his wits about him, he would’ve left already and yelled a thank you over his shoulder. But he wasn’t, so Tony let Peter curled up above the duvet on his bed, the blanket swaddling him, and smiled.
He could do with a nap, Tony supposed.
And when he woke up, he’d organise training and redress Peter’s wound. But for now, he’d get a bit of sleep.